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Received from the Friends of Christ's Hospital (FCH) - November 2009 newsletter
(click on image for pdf version)
Julian Taylor-Gadd
Leigh Hunt 1985-1992
Founder of The Unofficial CH Forum https://www.grovegeeks.co.uk - IT Support and website design for home, small businesses and charities.
"In a final Q & A, the Head Master announced that up to 92 new full fee students would be carefully phased in over the next five years.....He added that the program was easily reversible once the current cash flow shortage was resolved."
In my experience, such programs are very rarely reversed once they have been implemented.
I assume that this move will raise the number of full fee students to the currently allowable level of (if I remember correctly) 6%. I can't imagine that at the end of five years there would be 92 full fee payers in the school at any one time.
It´s a very complex matter, as without extra funds, what can CH do to stay alive in the long run AND educate as many students from economically deprived backgrounds as possible?
I am sure that they have looked at many alternatives and consider this as the least damaging.
Having heard both the Clerk and the Headmaster talk about the matter, they are very serious about the fact that CH MUST survive along with all that is unique about CH.
92 is probably more like 10%, but it will be very difficult to achieve in the present economic climate. There are many competing schools out there, all with their own financial problems, and some, probably charging less than CH.
It can´t have been an easy proposal to get Council to agree, and I feel sure that Council will monitor progress.
I haven´t run the numbers but would imagine question could be:
"Do you want to educate 700 students from "typical CH backgrounds" and 92 from the more well off, or 5 - 600 typical CH students?
Discuss and justify.